On the enregisterment of Szekler. Communicational stereotypes recreated in the sketch Úgy-e, Magdi? by Open Stage

The article aims at unfolding the key linguistic aspects of nowadays’ stereotypical Szekler-representations through a case study on a satirical representation of regional communicative practices in the locally well-known sketch Úgy-e, Magdi? (‘Right, Magdi?’) by Open Stage. The research is mainly centred around the concept of enregisterment, thus the work is meant to be a contribution to the scarce literature on the enregisterment of Szekler (and Hungarian dialects in general) and on regional communicative practices. After providing a brief overview of the key areas and aspects along which the Szekler dialect has been enregistered so far in public discourse and in linguistics, the article tries to capture the main attributes which create the authentic Szekler voice for Hungarian speakers through analyzing the plot, the characterological figures and the linguistic repertoire conveyed by the sketch, as well as the online reactions to it given by viewers. Besides examining the most prominent phonological/phonetic, lexical and grammatical phenomena construed as characteristic to Szekler, the article also touches upon some regional conversational features depicted through stylization by the sketch.

Four major literary code-switching strategies in Hungarian literature. Decoding monolingualism

The field of literary multilingualism has quickly grown over the last decades. Multiple studies have examined the way linguistic diversity manifests itself in literature by focusing on specific strategies such as code-switching, code-mixing, code-shifting, hybridization, etc. However, the current understanding of multilingual practices is still dominated by a remarkable terminological inconsistency. In this article, we provide a new theoretical framework called ‘literary code-switching’ (Domokos 2018–2020), that can be used to examine most literary multilingual practices – from the most hidden or latent to the more manifest ones. This formulation, which is scaled into degrees from 0 to 5, will be applied to some key examples taken from the works of Imre Madách, Mihály Tompa, Imre Oravecz, Attila Jász, Ferenc Karinthy, Terézia Mora and Anne Tardos. The aim of picking up these heuristic examples from Hungarian literature is to point towards the necessity of investigating literature more systematically according to its hidden and manifest linguistic diversity.

Writing for the Family Audience

Családi Kör (1860–1880) was the leading Hungarian domestic magazine of the mid-19th period, which, under the editorship of the first Hungarian woman of letters Emília Kánya, played a major role in introducing the domestic readership to contemporary European literature and in discussing the struggle of women’s employment opportunities before a wider public. Critical studies have also suggested that it was edited and published under the influence of the German Gartenlaube (1853–1944), the journal credited with embedding the journal of domestic magazine in the broader regime of 19th century print culture. Based on a close reading of the two magazines’ coverage in its European cultural historical context, this chapter offers an account of the possible connections and affinities between the two periodicals, and argues that the Hungarian magazine was significantly more daring in its politics and more systematic in its pursuit of introducing the local audience to European literary trends and works.

Living on the both sides of an invisible border – the impacts of Covid-19 in the Tornio River Valley

In her article “Living on the both sides of an invisible border – the impacts of Covid-19 in the Tornio River Valley” Helena Ruotsala discusses what impacts the Covid-19 had in the cross-border region between Finland and Sweden. She uses concepts of transnationalism and multilocality when studying local everyday life. The area is divided by a national border, which has been invisible until March 2020, but when Covid-19 spread over the nations, Finland and Sweden, the border became visible and was marked by a riot fence. The effects of Covid-19 and closing the border from the point of view of local inhabitants are discussed in this article.

A Missed Opportunity? Transylvania as a Virtual Central Europe

The article focuses on the analysis of the ideas of Aladár Kuncz, a writer, literary critic and editor who defined Transylvanian Hungarian literature after 1918 in a European context. The concept of Transylvanism is discussed through the debates of the interwar period, and is situated within the context of Hungarian literary modernism. In the light of the Transylvanian literary ideas of the 1920s and 1930s, minority / regional literatures would have been directly related to a new concept of European and world literature beyond national literatures, along a line of thought that acknowledged the deterministic character of regionalism, and prioritized it also at the level of cultural memory, considering it to be primary over linguistic, national, and the changing geographical boundaries. These endeavours sought to revive an emphatic idea of Central Europe with its strict ideals of quality besides strong local, decentralized, yet transnational aspirations, while making them compatible with the preservation of linguistic and cultural ties with the three traditional Transylvanian nations. The article also discusses the reasons why, in the midst of the 1930s, facing political restrictions, the literary form of Transylvanism became outdated in the eye of the younger generations of the Hungarian community.

Geographical Distribution of the Traditional Dance Culture in Mezőség

The exact definition of the Mezőség/Câmpia Transilvaniei/Transylvanian Plain, hereafter Plain, as a region with an independent folk culture having a coherent internal structure is still a subject of debate among ethnographers. Some of them regard certain small regions (Borsa/Borșa Valley, Kis and Nagy Szamos/Someșul Mic și Someșul Mare etc.) as belonging to the Mezőség/Plain, while others do not. I distinguish a central group of the villages in the Mezőség/Plain region (Belső-Mezőség or Central Plain: e.g. Visa/Vișea, Magyarpalatka/Pălatca, Katona/Cătina, Pusztakamarás/Cămăraşu) from the rest of the territory, similarly to György Martin, István Pávai and László Barabás, relying on material culture and folklore research, as well as my own investigations. When advancing outward from this core area, the concentric circle of so-called peripheral areas follow (the West, North, East and South Plain/Mezőség), reaching the boundaries on the edges of the region: Nagy Szamos/Someșul Mare Valley, Lápos/Lăpuș Valley, Sajó/Șieu Valley, Maros/Mureş Valley, Marosszéki1 Mezőség/Mureș Seat Plain, Erdőalja/Sub Pădure area, Borsa/Borșa Valley, and Kis Szamos/Someșul Mic Valley. A further, smaller group of villages can be distinguished in the area of Belső-Mezőség/Central Plain by their dance and music culture; for the regular weekend dance events of these villages, organised by local youths in the 1960s, Roma musicians of Magyarpalatka/Pălatca would play the music. I assign the name Palatka dance district to this area in my paper.

Do Verbal Meanings Have a Radial Organization?

The paper presents a cognitive-functional analysis of two Hungarian verbs, eszik ‘eat’ and táplál ‘feed’, with the aim of providing a sample for an exhaustive semantic description of verbal polysemy and of relations between verbal meanings. The hypothesis of the study was that a radial category description of the internal semantic structure of both verbs is possible. The assumption, however, was not confirmed by the analysis; not all meanings of the verb eszik ‘eat’ can be described as deriving from the prototypical eating situation. Some show cases of conceptual blending, while others have a source domain other than the prototypical eating situation. Nonetheless, many figurative meanings seem to be the result of metaphorical meaning shift trigged by common components we experience in the prototypical eating situation and other perceptions. These common components show resemblance on a schematic base.

Components of Belonging in Two Finno-Ugric Minority Literatures

The topics of the present research are, in a larger sense, two multilingual and multicultural regions: the Tornio Valley in Northern Scandinavia and Transylvania in Eastern Europe. In a narrower sense, I am analysing two novels written in minority languages, a Transylvanian Hungarian novel written by Károly Molter, entitled Tibold Márton and a novel written in Meänkieli by Bengt Pohjanen, Jopparikuninkhaan poika (The Smuggler King’s Son). I attempt to answer two main research questions: 1. How is the belonging of the two main characters to a different language and ethnic group presented in the analysed Hungarian and Meänkieli novels? 2. How can the borders between “us” and “them” be constructed through inclusion and exclusion and how can they be crossed at the individual level? I will thus concentrate on some aspects of the narratives of inclusion and exclusion, as represented in the above-mentioned novels.

Difficulties in Reading Comprehension of Hungarian Primary School Students in Slovakia

Our study aimed to assess the level of reading comprehension, one of the cornerstones of education of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, and to answer the research question of what kind of deficits need to be addressed in the development of reading comprehension. The research was conducted with the participation of students from primary schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction in Slovakia. In our study, we shed light on the problems found in cognitive reasoning, accurate interpretation of information and complex reading comprehension. The extent to which the development of new cognitive schemata caused problems for the studied groups was also investigated. In several cases, the responses were not based on textual information, but only on the respondents’ existing schemas. The results also show that it was a problem for the learners to answer both the multiple-choice questions and the open-ended and explanatory questions.

Cultural regionalism in Hungarian context

As an introduction to the thematic issue of Hungarian Studies Yearbook, dedicated to Regionalism in culture – cultural regionalism, the article offers an overview of current research interests in the field. Within the domain of Hungarian studies, regional approaches and the idea of cultural areas as an important frame for cultural analysis and comparison was present in research work from the 19th century. After a general introduction, the article presents the current methodological approaches to regionalism studies and the main topics debated in the fields of literary studies, linguistics, and cultural anthropology.